Elevate Your Creditability With Power Part II
Top Power Skills for Modern Leaders
If you read my last post I shared information about the power skill of time and place - learning to read the room and navigating various environments. I received questions from readers wanting to learn more about additional power skills to master.
Power skills are universal abilities and transferable competencies, they are not job-specific and are just as important as hard skills. Power skills are critical to future-proofing your career and have become increasingly in demand. The market is no longer referring to them as soft skills because there's nothing soft about them.
At Thomas More University I teach these skills through mentorship and entrepreneurship education. Entrepreneurial thinking involves looking at problems as opportunities and finding innovative solutions to solve them. This can prepare students to be successful in a rapidly changing work environment and provide valuable skills that can be applied across a variety of careers.
Below I offer a list of the top power skills organizations are seeking:
Creative Problem Solving: The ability to identify, analyze, and resolve complex problems effectively and capacity to do so with innovative ideas and improve processes.
Collaboration: The ability to work with others to achieve a common goal by sharing ideas, resources, and responsibilities.
Communication: The skill to give and receive information clearly and effectively in various contexts.
Growth Mindset: Ability to thrive in dynamic and challenging environment, and achieve long-term success.
Agility and Critical Thinking: Ability to learn from experience, failure, and embrace change to think critically in new situations. Critical thinkers have the ability to analyze and evaluate information objectively and make sound decisions.
Multi-cultural Fluency: The ability to understand and appreciate different cultures and effectively communicate and work with people from diverse backgrounds.
Time Management: The skill to prioritize tasks, manage time effectively, and meet deadlines.
Emotional Intelligence (EI): The ability to understand, manage, and use emotions, which includes self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management (ie. time/place, empathy, vulnerability).
Self motivation and self directed: The ability to work with less oversight and management, ability to take initiative and ownership of work, set achievable goals and adapt plans as necessary.
Integrity and Ethical Responsibility: The ability to take responsibility for actions, have humility, respect others' time, give credit where it's due, and take ownership of their work - especially when things go wrong.
Which power skill do you think is most important in your industry?